After hitting historic lows in 2008, voter turnout rose to 61.4% in Monday’s election as voters in northern Canada and suburban Ontario flocked to the polls in higher numbers than before. Meanwhile, turnout fell in Quebec even as the province witnessed the rise of the NDP. Here, the Post analyzes some of the more surprising results.

GREATER TORONTO

Much of the election talk in the region focused on the Conservative strategy of courting the ethnic vote to break the local Liberal stranglehold. But when a young Sri Lankanborn woman captured a longtime Liberal seat in the immigrant-heavy and notoriously apathetic riding of Scarborough-Rouge-River -bringing with her an influx of new voters -the victory was not for the Tories, but for the NDP.

Turnout in the riding rose 18% as Rathika Sitsabaiesan, 29, became the country’s first Tamil MP, capturing an area that had been held by the Liberals since the 1980s. Turnout also rose in other former Liberal strongholds in the GTA as voters handed victories to both Conservatives and New Democrats.

In Mississauga East-Cooksville, turnout rose 15% as Wladyslaw Lizon, the former head of the Canadian Polish Congress, captured the riding for the Conservatives. Turnout was also up 15% in Mississauga-Brampton-South as Conservative Eve Adams won the formerly Liberal seat.

It helped that two of the ridings had no incumbent, which can make a local race more competitive and boost turnout, said University of Toronto political scientist Stephen Clarkson. But the rise of the NDP nationally also appeared to bring new voters to the polls in those areas; the New Democrats nearly doubled their support in the ridings, even if the party had little hope of capturing Mississauga.

“There are these bandwagon effects,” he said. “A lot of people like to vote for a winner and there might even people people who are NDP at heart who never bothered voting before and this time they think they can actually make a difference.”

The Conservative strategy to target so-called “ethnic media” in ridings with large immigrant populations also seemed to have worked, said Phil Triadafilopoulos, an associate professor at U of T’s School of Public Policy and Governance.

“We know from the campaign and from the leaked strategy document that the Conservative Party was targeting ridings with higher than average new Canadian voters,” he said. “The Conservative Party has a well-organized strategy for getting the vote out generally. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they used it. It appears that there might have been some positive effect in terms of getting that vote out.”

The most significant change locally was the collapse of the Liberal vote. “In the end people were quite surprised by the outcome of the Liberal Party. Their people did come out and vote, I just don’t know if they voted Liberal this time,” said Ryerson University political scientist Duncan MacLellan.

QUEBEC

Between the unexpected rise of the NDP and the collapse of the Bloc Québécois, all eyes were on the province this election. Typically, when voters rise up and demand a sea change, voter turnout rises too. But that did not happen in Quebec: Voter turnout was flat and even fell in many ridings, while Quebecers voted overwhelmingly to elect a party the province had long ignored.

Many ridings that handed landslide victories to the NDP saw their turnout fall. They included Laval-Les-Iles, where turnout dropped 6% even as voters handed NDP candidate François Pilon four times as many votes as the party garnered in 2008. Ms. Pilon is comparatively well-known for an NDP candidate in Quebec, having headed a City of Laval union and run for the party in the last federal election. She captured a seat vacated by retiring longtime Liberal Raymonde Falco. In Saint-Jean, NDP candidate Tarik Brahmi trounced longtime Bloc Québécois incumbent Claude Bachand while voter turnout fell 6%.

But while pundits were busy debating the Bloc’s downfall, most of the ridings that saw the biggest drop in turnout were Liberal strongholds, including former party leader Stéphane Dion’s riding of Saint-Laurent-Cartierville and former Liberal cabinet minister Denis Coderre’s Bourassa constituency. In ridings where the Liberals were not competitive, the party’s vote fell even further.

“It’s very hard for a Bloquiste to put an X next to a Liberal, but putting an X next to the NDP is no problem,” he said. “When you see the rise of the NDP, if you’re a Liberal you either go and vote for them or say forget it, I have no role to play in this election.”

NORTHERN CANADA

Northern ridings have traditionally recorded some of Canada’s lowest turnout. For example, a little over a third of voters in Labrador bothered to cast ballots in 2008. But turnout was up more than 15% across the northern territories in this election as voters elected the largest federal aboriginal caucus in history.

Voter turnout was up 25% in Nunavut, where voters handed Conservative cabinet minister Leona Aglukkaq a decisive win. It rose 16% in the riding of Western Artic, where NDP incumbent Dennis Bevington boosted his support by 28%.

Other competitive races featured high-profile candidates. Peter Penashue, the former head of Labrador’s Innu Nation, ran and won for the Conservatives in Labrador. Paul Okalik, Nunavut’s first premier, ran for the Liberals in that territory, and former Northwest Territories premier Joe Handley carried the Liberal banner in the riding of Western Arctic; both lost.

The challenges to holding an election campaign in the North are immense. Take Labrador Conservative MP-elect Mr. Penashue’s schedule on the Sunday before the election, for example. He started the day at 6 a.m. in Happy Valley-Goose Bay recording a telephone message before driving four hours up a dirt road to Churchill Falls to knock on a few hundred doors. Then he took the dirt road four hours back and hopped a plane to the remote island fishing community of Black Tickle in time for a 9: 30 p.m. town hall with 40 people. “We made a commitment to visit every community and Black Tickle was the only community we hadn’t visited,” said Mr. Penashue’s campaign manager, Reg Bowers.

An election day blizzard hampered voters across Nunavut and Labrador, with some of Mr. Penashue’s supporters unable to fly home from work to vote because of the weather. But that didn’t stop turnout in Labrador from jumping by more than 35%, as voters handed Mr. Penashue a landslide win, the first for the Conservatives in the riding since the 1960s.

The Innu communities of Natuashish and Sheshatshiu -where Mr. Bowers said more voters turned out to vote than were even registered -voted almost universally for Mr. Penanshue. The Conservatives campaigned on a platform of Arctic sovereignty and on big promises by Northern candidates to fund infrastructure projects, notably a loan guarantee for Labrador’s massive Lower Churchill Falls hydroelectric project (which Mr. Penashue’s own mother, an Innu activist, spoke out against during the campaign). Liberal Todd Russell opposed the project.

“That was the line in the sand,” Mr. Bowers said. “You were either for it or against it. Most of the people were voting for that rather than along traditional party lines.”

ALBERTA

Alberta has long been a haven of voter apathy toward federal politics, thanks to years of uncompetitive races that have elected Conservatives with sweeping majorities. This year, however, talk of an NDP surge seems to have renewed the vigour of Conservative voters in the party’s heartland. Turnout across the province rose 8%, including in Fort McMurray-Athabasca, which has historically registered some of the lowest voter turnout in the country. Turnout rose 16% in the riding, in the heart of Alberta’s oil sands. All parties increased their vote, but longtime Conservative incumbent Brian Jean saw his rise by 31%.

Ridings including Medicine Hat, Edmonton Centre and Calgary East all increased turnout by more than 10% while handing Conservative incumbents even bigger victories than they saw in 2008.

Even if a rise in NDP support nationally seemed unlikely to sweep over Alberta, Conservative voters might have been outraged enough at the mere thought of a leftwing coalition government to head to the polls, said University of Toronto political scientist Stephen Clarkson.

They were spurred on by party leader Stephen Harper’s appeal the weekend before the election to vote Conservative to stop an NDP-led government.

“You can have the antibandwagon effect, which was what happened last weekend,” he said of the rising Conservative vote.

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